A design approach of integral-abutment steel girder bridges for maintenance

Integral abutment bridges (IABs) have no joint across the length of bridge and are therefore also known as jointless bridges. IABs have many advantages, such as structural integrity, efficiency, and stability. More importantly, IABs have proven to be have both low maintenance and construction costs. However, due to the restraints at both ends of the girder due to the absence of a gap (joint), special design considerations are required. For example, while replacing the deck slabs to extend the service life of the IAB, the buckling strength of the steel girder without a deck slab could be much smaller than the case with deck slab in place. With no deck slab, the addition of thermal expansion in the steel girders generates passive earth pressure from the abutment and if the applied axial force is greater than the buckling strength of the steel girders, buckling failure can occur. In this study, numerical simulations were performed to estimate the buckling strength of typical steel girders in IABs. The effects of girder length, the width of flange and thickness of flange, imperfection due to fabrication and construction errors on the buckling strengths of multiple and single girders in IABs are studied. The effect of girder spacing, span length ratio (for a three span girder) and self-weight effects on the buckling strength are also studied. For estimation of the reaction force of the abutment generated by the passive earth pressure of the soil, BA 42/96 (2003), PennDOT DM4 (2015) and the LTI proposed equations (2009) were used and the results obtained are compared with the buckling strength of the steel girders. Using the selected design equations and the results obtained from the numerical analysis, equations for preventing the buckling failure of steel girders during deck replacement for maintenance are presented.